Novices enrolled in introductory programming courses often face many difficulties. These difficulties are more emphasized when novices are K–12 students. Many new visual programming languages have primarily been designed to provide a smooth introduction to programming for children. However, at some point, a general‐purpose text‐based programming language should be used. A well‐known and studied method is to visualize program execution to assist novices in forming correct mental models. Although many studies have investigated the effects of using visualizations in teaching and learning, most of them focus on courses taught at the university level. Studies that focus on investigating the impact of program visualizations at the K–12 level are, to the best of our knowledge, scarce. Therefore, we investigated the impact of using program visualizations with a group of K–12 students. Because of the underrepresentation of girls in computer science and known gender stereotypes, we additionally investigated student performance based on gender. Our research included 98 fifth‐grade students from three elementary schools. The lectures in the experimental group included different visualization techniques, including a program visualization tool and PowerPoint animations, whereas the control group had no program visualizations. All students learned Python as part of their curriculum. We present the results of our research in this paper.

中文翻译：

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使用程序可视化技术对学习K-12级别的基本编程概念的影响

入门编程课程的新手通常会遇到许多困难。当初学者是K-12学生时，这些困难会更加突出。主要设计了许多新的可视化编程语言，以便为儿童编程提供流畅的入门。但是，在某些时候，应该使用通用的基于文本的编程语言。一种众所周知且经过研究的方法是可视化程序执行，以帮助新手形成正确的心理模型。尽管许多研究调查了在教学中使用可视化效果的影响，但大多数研究都侧重于大学一级的课程。据我们所知，专注于调查程序可视化在K-12级别上的影响的研究很少。因此，我们调查了一组K-12学生使用程序可视化的影响。由于计算机科学领域女生的代表性不足以及已知的性别刻板印象，我们另外调查了基于性别的学生表现。我们的研究包括来自三所小学的98位五年级学生。实验小组的讲座包括不同的可视化技术，包括程序可视化工具和PowerPoint动画，而对照组则没有程序可视化。所有学生都将Python作为课程的一部分来学习。我们在本文中介绍了我们的研究结果。我们的研究包括来自三所小学的98位五年级学生。实验小组的讲座包括不同的可视化技术，包括程序可视化工具和PowerPoint动画，而对照组则没有程序可视化。所有学生都将Python作为课程的一部分来学习。我们在本文中介绍了我们的研究结果。我们的研究包括来自三所小学的98位五年级学生。实验小组的讲座包括不同的可视化技术，包括程序可视化工具和PowerPoint动画，而对照组则没有程序可视化。所有学生都将Python作为课程的一部分来学习。我们在本文中介绍了我们的研究结果。